


take your own pulse

by Anonymous



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: (it's only one section and the only reason this fic is rated T), (mild I swear), AU: Dougie is a medical student, Body Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26415556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Dating a professional athlete is weird enough for regular people, Dougie assumes, and by “regular people” he means people who are women and who aren’t medical students.
Relationships: Dougie Hamilton/Andrei Svechnikov
Comments: 12
Kudos: 202
Collections: Anonymous





	take your own pulse

**Author's Note:**

> There is one very, very brief section of something like body horror in this fic, pretty mild, but also not integral to the plot so feel free to skip if it's not your thing. It starts "There had been one very bad night early on..."

“Tell me again,” says Andrei, holding out his hand like an offering, and Dougie’s already more than behind on the night’s studying but he pushes aside his iPad, pushes the hair off his forehead, and takes Andrei’s forearm and wrist carefully in his fingertips. He spends a moment gathering his thoughts.

“Pronator teres,” he says, running his fingers along the pale underside of Andrei’s forearm. “Flexor carpi radialis, palmaris longus. Flexor carpi ulnaris. Don’t make me do origins and insertions or innervations or any of that tonight,” he adds, warningly, as Andrei opens his mouth. “It’s late.”

Andrei huffs but his eyes are warm on Dougie’s face as he continues.

“Flexor digitorum superficialis.” He traces a path into the palm of Andrei’s hand and up his fingers. “Flexor digitorum profundus.” Back down to the forearm again. “Pronator quadratus,” and he taps lightly over the skin of Andrei’s inner wrist. “Flexor pollicis longus.”

They’ve done this enough that Andrei flips his arm over without being prompted, and Dougie can’t help but laugh. “You’re going to know as much anatomy as I am, at this rate,” he says.

“Never,” says Andrei, gaze sparkling. The muscles of his extensor forearm, honed by a lifetime of stickhandling, stand out in sharp relief. Dougie runs his fingertips lightly down the medial side. 

“Brachioradialis,” he says, softly. “Extensor carpi radialis — longus, then brevis. Extensor digitorum.” He follows the lines of the tendons, clear as day over the back of Andrei’s hand where they run to join the extensor expansions. Andrei draws in an unsteady breath. Dougie skims his hand back down. “Extensor digiti minimi, and extensor carpi ulnaris.”

He lets his fingers linger over the head of the ulna, tracing it absentmindedly. Andrei’s fingers close around empty air, and he says, “Don’t be a tease.”

“You’re the one who wanted me to do this,” Dougie replies, and grins at Andrei’s look of heated frustration, and thinks, maybe the rest of the reading can wait till tomorrow. He runs his fingers up the skin of Andrei’s forearm again. “Supinator.”

***

The circumstances under which they’d met had been less than favorable. Dougie had gotten up early on a Saturday to do some reviewing in the lab, had realized on the way home he had nothing in the fridge, and had decided, stomach growling, that this one time he could justify running to the grocery store in his old scrubs that stank of formalin, as long as he stayed far enough away from everyone else. 

It worked perfectly until he was walking out the sliding doors, bags in his left hand and phone in his right, yawning and texting and hardly paying attention to his surroundings till he slammed up against something solid — someone solid. He heard the startled “oof” of exhaled breath and watched, horrified, as the paper cup of coffee the stranger had been holding seemed to spin through the air in slow motion before splattering onto the sidewalk and all over both their shoes.

“Shit,” Dougie said, aghast, looking up into a pair of wide and startled brown eyes. “Shit, I’m so sorry.” He stooped and picked up the empty cup before straightening again, reluctantly dragging his gaze away from the spreading tan puddle to the man’s face. 

“Eh,” the man said, clearly making an attempt at nonchalance as he shrugged and spread his hands a little. “It happens.” His brow was slightly furrowed, strands of light brown hair falling over his forehead. He had an accent Dougie couldn’t place.

“Nah, I should have been keeping a better eye out.” The coffee cup dangled uselessly from Dougie’s fingers. “I kind of ruined your morning. I — wasn’t thinking.”

There was an awkward pause. The man looked like he was trying to think of something to say, mouth opening and closing again.

“I could, uh, buy you another one?” Dougie offered, casting a desperate glance at the Starbucks next door. “Or get your shoes dry-cleaned?”

“It’s okay,” said the man, “I’m sure you need to get home. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you, um. Your clothes are kind of…” His nose wrinkled.

And Dougie already knew he reeked, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to crawl into a hole. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Just got back from the lab, I didn’t mean to — be out here for very long. I’m sorry.”

“It’s really okay, that was — probably not very nice of me to say.” The man rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, an embarrassed flush spreading over his cheeks. He couldn’t be older than his early 20s, Dougie realized suddenly. “But maybe some other time?”

Dougie blinked; he had to have misheard. “Some other time…?”

“If you wanted to buy me another coffee,” the man said, holding eye contact now. The edge of his mouth quirked upwards in a tentative smile. Dougie had never felt more blindsided in his life.

“Uh,” he managed, half-convinced he was dreaming it all and was about to wake up in his bed at home. “Sure.”

He handed the man his phone and watched him put his number in. Afterwards, in the car, he thumbed through his contacts until he got to the one he didn’t recognize. Andrei, it said.

***

It had taken him way longer than it should have to piece together that Andrei was Andrei Svechnikov, NHL superstar in the making. Weeks, and Andrei had laughed at him for days when the penny finally dropped.

“I’m in medical school!” he had protested over Andrei’s endless ribbing. “My situational awareness right now is like, negative five.”

Andrei had shaken his head in mock disappointment. “Only in medical school for a month. You are a terrible Canadian.” He had pursed his lips but his eyes were laughing. “A disgrace to your country.”

“Listen,” Dougie had begun, and Andrei had clapped a hand over his mouth and tackled him into the couch cushions.

***

Dating a professional athlete is weird enough for regular people, Dougie assumes, and by “regular people” he means people who are women and who aren’t medical students. His free nights overlap with Andrei’s a lot less often than either of them would prefer, and they have to be careful about who sees them, and where; not as careful as they might need to be somewhere like Toronto or Boston, but careful nonetheless. Sometimes it aches, but then sometimes Andrei comes over and sits quietly on the couch, scrolling through his phone while Dougie pores over a video about protein synthesis inhibitors for the fifth time, never once complaining about the lack of interaction. Once Dougie had been deeply, deeply in the shit before an exam and had spent all day in silence at Andrei’s kitchen table, headphones on, switching back and forth between his Netter flashcards and his molecular bio textbook; he had barely noticed when Andrei left the apartment until he came back with a brown paper bag and a steaming to-go cup. He had set them down beside Dougie’s laptop, squeezed his shoulder gently, and gone back to reviewing game tape without a word. It was a sandwich and coffee from the place down the block, his favorite one. Dougie had looked at the clock. 7 pm and he hadn’t eaten in nine hours, and hadn’t even realized. But Andrei had.

Sometimes, when he can spare the hours, Dougie watches the games. It brings back a little of the old pain; he had played hockey himself as a kid, and been good — better than good — till he had broken his leg right through the growth plate, and then that had been the end of that. But watching Andrei play is enough of a delight that he can’t be maudlin about it, ever. Even better is the once in a while when the stars align, his schedule is just free enough for Andrei to get him a ticket to a home game, and he gets to sit in the stands and see the magic happen live. And if he can’t come down to the locker room afterwards like some of the WAGs do, he can still linger by the edge of the PNC north lot and brush the shower-damp hair off Andrei’s forehead and kiss him goodnight where no one can see. 

***

There had been one very bad night early on, right before the first anatomy lab practical. Dougie had been in the lab all weekend, it felt like, tracing nerves and identifying vasculature until his head spun, coming home to try in vain to scrub the fixative smell off his skin, brushing his teeth until he couldn’t taste formalin on his breath anymore. Sunday night, late, he had staggered home well past when he should have been sleeping, and had barely had the energy to shower before he crawled into bed. His hands had still smelled of chemicals where they were tucked under his pillow.

He was alone in the lab, under the harsh fluorescent glare. There was one open table, waiting for him, and he pulled back the shroud to the cadaver’s hips. The tattered and stained copy of Grant’s Dissector on its stand was open to the chapter on the abdominal wall and inguinal canal. He opened his instrument case and slid a new blade onto his scalpel, and ran his gloved hands over the stiff flesh, feeling for the xiphisternal junction, getting ready to make the first incision. Movement out of the corner of his eye made his head snap up. The cadaver’s eyes were open. It was watching him. It wore Andrei’s face, the skin grey and sunken. It opened its mouth.

He had woken up drenched in sweat and panting, and had sat with his knees to his chest and the bedside lamp on until the first dawn light crept over the windowsill, and only then had he slept, a little. By some miracle he had passed the practical. He never told Andrei about the dream.

***

It’s the middle of February, all cold drizzle and overcast skies. Microbiology, Dougie is pretty sure, is going to be the death of him, if his outpatient preceptorship doesn’t get him first. He scrubs his hands over his face, frustrated, and glances at the clock. Groans. 

“How’s it going?” That’s Andrei behind him, with perfectly terrible timing. He had almost forgotten he was here.

Dougie laughs, sharp and short, flipping the stylus of his iPad jerkily between his fingers. “Not great.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Andrei says. There is a pause. It takes Dougie a moment to realize that Andrei is waiting for something. 

“What’s up?” he asks, spinning his chair just enough to regard Andrei in the doorway, trying not to let his impatience bleed through in his voice.

Andrei shifts a little, one hand against the doorframe. “Valentine’s Day is coming up.”

“Ah, fuck.” Dougie had completely forgotten about Valentine’s Day. “Is it a weeknight?” 

Andrei hesitates a moment before he answers. “Yes.”

“Christ.” Dougie loses his grip on the stylus and it skitters across the desk and onto the floor. He lunges to pick it up, annoyance boiling over. “Fucking… I do not have time to deal with this shit.”

The silence that follows is deafening. Dougie looks up and sees Andrei’s eyes gone crystalline with hurt.

“Andrei,” Dougie begins, heart suddenly in his throat, but Andrei is gone. By the time he’s out of his chair the front door is already closing.

He rings Andrei’s doorbell an hour and a half later, holding a bulging paper sack. Andrei answers quickly, even opens the door all the way, which, Dougie is almost certain, is more than he deserves. His eyes flick down to the bag, wary. He holds himself very still.

“I’m sorry,” Dougie says. “I was a dick and it didn’t have anything to do with you. Which makes me even more of a dick.”

“Yes,” Andrei agrees, and doesn’t move. His face is unreadable.

Dougie hefts the sack. “I found the one place in the Triangle that sells pirozhki.” He’s gratified to see Andrei’s eyes widen. “They’re for you. I don’t have to stay if you don’t want me to.” A little desperate, he adds, “But I want to. For the record.”

He can read the expression on Andrei’s face now: stern. Dougie’s heart sinks.

“These aren’t on the meal plan,” Andrei says finally. His brows are still drawn together, but the corner of his mouth twitches, just a little.

“I guess I could always take them back home with me,” Dougie says, relief beginning to crack open in his chest.

“Don’t you dare,” says Andrei, and he’s full-on grinning now, small but real. “Come inside, asshole.”

They sit at Andrei’s kitchen counter and eat pirozhki and drink beer until they’re both stuffed and the bag lies crumpled and grease-stained between them. There is silence again, but it’s the silence of contentment and full stomachs. 

“I found a local steakhouse that does multi-course to-go dinners for Valentine’s,” Dougie says, toying with a bottle cap. “They still have a couple of spots open. 4.8 stars on Google reviews.” 

He looks up at Andrei and sees him looking back, eyes soft. “That sounds perfect.”

I don’t deserve you, Dougie wants to say. Instead he says, “You know it’s always going to be like this?”

He’s told Andrei a little about it before; about third-year rotations and residency and 24-hour call, about 80-hour weeks and night float. He’s told him, but he doesn’t know if he understands.

“I know,” says Andrei, quiet, and rubs his thumb gently across the back of Dougie’s hand.

***

“How do you think it went?” Andrei asks, crackly over the line.

“Good,” Dougie says, blowing his breath out, stretching his legs along the couch. “Like, way better than I expected.”

“That’s great,” says Andrei, voice warm and proud. “I knew you could do it.”

“And now I’m done.” He can’t suppress a grin at the thought of it. Last final of M1 year, out of the way. An entire glorious summer ahead.

“So tomorrow you’re going to come to New York and cheer us on, right?” 

Dougie groans. Andrei laughs, fond and teasing.

“I mean,” Dougie says, trying valiantly to be a good boyfriend even though he feels like he could sleep for a week. “I will if you really want me to.”

Andrei hums over the phone, pretending to consider. “Well, if you send us good luck, I guess that’s probably good enough.”

“I don’t think you need my good luck, with how you’re doing right now.”

“Don’t jinx it,” says Andrei, but there’s no heat in it. He drops his voice, conspiratorial. “But it does feel pretty great right now.”

It hovers in the air between them: what if this is the year? Dougie will never say it aloud. But they’re up three games to one in the conference final, and it’s spring in North Carolina and the air feels ripe with possibility, and he wants to believe so badly it hurts.

If there’s anyone that deserves that confidence, it’s Andrei. 

“I believe in you,” he says, simply.

He can hear Andrei’s smile. “You’ll be there when we get home?”

“I’ll be here,” says Dougie.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "The House of God."


End file.
